I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're doing something.

In many ways, it was much, much harder to get the first book contract. The hardest thing probably overall has been learning not to trust people, publicists and so forth, implicitly.

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and adventures are the shadow truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes and forgotten.

Empathy is a tool for building people into groups, for allowing us to function as more than self-obsessed individuals.

When I tried to branch out into comedy, I didn't do very well at it, so I went back to doing what I do naturally well, or what the audience expects from me - action pictures.

Comedy, we may say, is society protecting itself - with a smile.

I've always said people say on a dramatic show, 'I was crying. It was so emotional when he went and grabbed that little girl from a burning building and handed her over to her mother.' In comedy, the best thing you can say is, 'I think it's funny.'

I always feel that comedy, at its best, tackles issues that are controversial, polarizing, volatile, and sheds light onto those issues and the people involved.